Steward signs new deal with healthcare union

Steward Health Care has reached a new three-year labor agreement with the healthcare workers union that spans eight Massachusetts hospitals, including Quincy Medical Center and Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton.

Steward Health Care has reached a new three-year labor agreement with the healthcare workers union that spans eight Massachusetts hospitals, including Quincy Medical Center and Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton.

The labor union 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, the state’s largest healthcare workers union at 5,000 members, announced Tuesday it had reached a new deal with Steward. The membership covers a broad range of service, clerical, and technical employees at eight of the Steward hospitals.

“This agreement is a victory for healthcare workers and includes provisions that will continue to improve and reward the remarkable care that 1199SEIU caregivers at Steward hospitals deliver to our communities,” said 1199SEIU Executive Vice President Veronica Turner in a prepared statement.

The new contract includes a guaranteed 2-percent pay raise in each of the three years, totaling a 6-percent increase during the life of the deal. The new contract also ensures that lower-wage workers, such as dietary and housekeeping staff, receive at least a living wage.

“The bargaining committee did a fabulous job negotiating the contract. We won job security, pay increases, and have great, affordable healthcare coverage,” Rodney Mohammed, a bio-medical technician at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, said in prepared statement.

The hospitals affected by the agreement are: St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton; Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton; Carney Hospital in Dorchester; Quincy Medical Center; Norwood Hospital; Holy Family Hospital in Methuen; Merrimack Valley Hospital in Haverhill; and Morton Hospital in Taunton.

The terms of the contract do not apply to Steward employees at Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, St. Anne’s Hospital in Fall River, or New England Sinai Hospital in Stoughton. Workers at those three Steward-owned facilities have not yet organized to join the union.

In June, Steward reached a one-year agreement with the nurses’ union at Quincy Medical Center. The nurses, who staged a one-day strike at the hospital in April, had been working without a contract since 2011